


drive all night

by mercuryhatter



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, oh look shower sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:25:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>saying what use is a night when you can't sleep anyway</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	drive all night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truethingsproved](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/gifts).



“Really, it’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Grantaire thinks if he has to say the word ‘fine’ one more time it’s going to come out as a scream. Enjolras can’t see him through the phone, and Grantaire doesn’t really want to glare at him anyway, so he glares at the canvases leaning against the wall instead. “Yeah. Yeah, you too. ‘Night.”   
  
He hangs up and tosses the phone on the bed with a sigh, falling down on the mattress himself a moment later, one hand flailing vaguely for the remote. It really wasn’t a big deal that the gallery had turned him down. It was a miracle that he’d gotten through art school at all, he reminds himself, so it’s not like this was unexpected. In fact, it was fine. Fine fine fine fuckity fine. He doesn’t care even a little bit that he’d driven all the way out here, worked for months on the paintings— months that had been sober, just by the way— only to be turned down.  
  
Nope. Doesn’t care at all.   
  
Grantaire sighs and gathers all the slightly stale-smelling hotel pillows to him, wraps his arms around them and rests his chin petulantly on the corner of the topmost one.   
  
He is not cuddling a pile of hotel pillows. Just like he doesn’t care about the gallery.   
  
But he is, and he does, so he falls asleep to the sound of a laugh track on the television, with faint lines drawn between his furrowed eyebrows.  
  
—-  
  
Grantaire wakes an indistinguishable amount of time later to the sound of someone very loud and very insistent knocking on the door. They don’t even stop and wait between knocks, just continuous bang-bang-bang-bang, and Grantaire groans loudly and peers one-eyed at the clock.  
  
“You’re not fucking housekeeping, it’s four in the morning, and if you’re not housekeeping you’ve got the wrong room, so go away!” he yells, throwing the offending clock at the door and belatedly hoping it doesn’t break. The knocking pauses and Grantaire stuffs his face into his pillow, thinking he’s won— and his phone goes off on the nightstand.   
  
He’s about to complain about that too when he realizes he has three missed calls and four missed texts.  
  
E: I’m at your door, let me in.  
  
E: Am I being ignored on purpose or…?  
  
E: Honestly, if I hadn’t slept with you before, I’d never believe you sleep this soundly.  
  
And the latest one: it’s me, asshole, let me in.  
Oh.   
  
Grantaire rolls out of bed, not bothering to put on anything more than the boxer shorts he went to sleep in, and answers the door. Well, really, he fumbles with the lock for a good thirty seconds before essentially nudging the door open with his face and then leaning his forehead on the frame so he could stare semi-belligerently at Enjolras without falling over.   
  
“What’re you doing here?” he mumbled, face wrinkling and crumpling as his mouth opened in a yawn. While his eyes were still closed Enjolras stepped forward and Grantaire felt warm arms around him as he was moved far enough from the door for it to be closed behind them. He opened his eyes as the yawn ended to find Enjolras very close to him, one arm around his shoulders with the elbow crooked up so that Enjolras could rest his hand in Grantaire’s curls. He is smiling, just one corner of his mouth tilted upwards.   
  
“No, wait, really, what are you doing here?” Grantaire says again, frowning as his mind starts to work through the sleep still fogging it. “You must have driven for ages, don’t you have, I don’t know, things…”  
  
Enjolras almost laughs then, although it’s not clear to Grantaire why. He traces the pad of his thumb over Grantaire’s eyebrow, then touches another place near Grantaire’s collarbone.  
  
“You’re all covered in paint,” he says.  
  
“Oh. Yeah,” Grantaire responds, looking down at himself. “Stress relief, you know.” Paint took the place of alcohol during these sober periods, acrylics or watercolors or spray paints on concrete. The fruits of his labors weren’t always good, but it was the motions and the smells and the left-behind colors that were distracting, that mattered. This time it had been spray paint, for lack of media, and the back wall of the motel now had a new mural it had never asked for, the remains of which were scattered across Grantaire’s skin and into his hair. Enjolras tugs lightly at one of the curls matted into a clump with green paint; the motion is a question, and Grantaire answers by leaning forward acquiescently. Enjolras meets him halfway and buries a kiss into the corner of his mouth.  
  
“C’mon,” he says, starting to walk towards the bathroom and guiding Grantaire along with him. “I smell like car and you’re covered in paint.”  
  
Grantaire drops his head onto Enjolras’ shoulder, mumbling something about sleep, and Enjolras stops, glancing down at him,  
  
“Do you want to go to sleep?” he asks. Grantaire sees something in his eyes, a spark behind the blue, that wakes him up quicker than coffee.  
  
“No,” he says, so quickly that Enjolras almost laughs again, and now it’s Grantaire dragging Enjolras by the hand into the tiny bathroom. Grantaire feels lucky that he didn’t bother to put on real clothes, as they surely would have caused him problems now, but the boxers come off easily enough and he starts to run the water while Enjolras peels off his own clothes. Enjolras is barely free of his socks, the last garments to come off, when Grantaire is pulling him into the shower by his hips until they’re close enough to somehow both fit under the spray. Enjolras is being pliant, or maybe just slower than usual out of respect for Grantaire’s earlier grogginess, but Grantaire is wide awake now and alive with the knowledge that Enjolras drove all the way out here for him, no other reason just him, and just because he’d heard something in Grantaire’s voice on the phone earlier because Grantaire had downplayed the entire thing in the actual conversation, and if he wasn’t so concerned now with getting his hands all over Enjolras, breathing him in (and he didn’t smell like car at all, he smelled like blackcurrant, just like he always did) he might fall over with the sheer volume of things that this gesture was making him feel.   
  
Enjolras responds to the quickness of Grantaire’s hands and the intensity of his kisses, and soon they’re flipped around so that Grantaire’s back is pressed into the tile (except when Enjolras fits his hands behind to grip his ass and thrust their hips together). Enjolras drags his nails across Grantaire’s chest, sucked marks onto his neck, ground up against him, and Grantaire is very quickly a moaning mess against the wall, head tossed back and a broken stream-of-consciousness flying from his open mouth as his hands slip over Enjolras’s shoulders, bite into his hips, wind tightly into his hair.   
  
They are finished very quickly, collapsing into each other with the water running over their bodies and dripping from their hair. Enjolras has bitten his release into a livid red mark on Grantaire’s shoulder, and faint fingertip bruises are forming on Enjolras’ shoulders where Grantaire was holding on to keep himself from falling. Enjolras gives Grantaire a look, a flash of blue eyes through limp wet curls, and Grantaire starts to laugh, leaning in to capture Enjolras’ lips in a slow, languid kiss, arms looped loosely around each other.   
  
“Thanks,” Grantaire murmurs, shaking water out of his eyes. Enjolras rubs that same place above his eyebrow and combs his fingers through his hair, washing the last of the paint away.  
  
“Of course,” Enjolras says, as if it was nothing at all, and Grantaire has to kiss him again for the sheer sincerity, whispering  _I love you_  into his lips, because he still doesn’t want those words to meet the open air.  
  
They fall asleep wrapped up in each other, only barely toweled dry, hair soaking the pillowcase beneath them, and Grantaire winds himself around Enjolras in a way that’s far more satisfying than any pile of pillows. He thinks he hears his earlier words repeated back to him in the soft, vague place between sleeping and waking, but he’s had that particular dream so many times that he can’t be sure.   
  
Besides, he can feel those words scrawled in the lines across his chest, in the bite on his shoulder and in each even breath of the boy in his arms, so whether it was a dream or not doesn’t seem to matter.

**Author's Note:**

> psst- the bit about Enjolras smelling like blackcurrant is from Dusky's headcanon!


End file.
